"The evidence is now really strong that bottled water does environmental damage," he said.

"The bottles themselves take about 200ml of oil to make, you can use up to 3 litres of natural water to produce 1 litre of bottled water and we also know that about 43 per cent of bottles are recycled so the rest ends up as rubbish or landfill."

Professor Parker says on-campus retailers agree to the change.

"Given that Canberra's got good and plentiful fresh water we just can't see the environmental argument to continue the sale of bottled water," he said.

"What we're also doing as part of this whole measure is introducing new bubbler machines and vending machines for different kinds of water sales, all of which will use refillable containers rather than the bottles that are currently sold.

"So actually we're hoping that consumption of water will go up on campus. It will be fresh and natural tap water. It won't be bottled water."

The ban is being phased in with sales of bottled water on the campus to end by March 22.